


Gratuitous Interface

by ALC_Punk



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-04
Updated: 2018-02-04
Packaged: 2019-03-13 11:29:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13569666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ALC_Punk/pseuds/ALC_Punk
Summary: Clara gets an unexpected visitor after the events of Day of the Doctor. Shameless femslash.





	Gratuitous Interface

**Author's Note:**

> I started this sometime in... 2015, I think? And then stalled out at 500 or so words. I was going through an old file of multiple fandom ficlets and notes and saw it, and it sort of jumped into my head and got itself written the rest of the way. I seem to recall the original intention was to write some datk!fic thing where a bunch of death happened or something? But that is not where this went.

"You made them stop." The words whisper through Clara's head, half-heard, half-remembered. "The impossible girl inserts her oar, and then they stop..."

Clara's eyes snapped open, and she stared. It wasn't as though she'd been sleeping, after all--sleep was always a little strange and difficult these days (the routine of teaching, now that was something to cling to). Opposite her, half-perched, half-sprawled in the chair Clara had found down the hall and added to the room that she rarely used in the TARDIS (going home at night was still more her thing, but sometimes, there were lakes and rivers and mud-baths that were unintentional), was a girl. Older than Clara's students, younger than she herself.

Except for around her eyes. That's where she was old. Older than the Doctor. Older than time itself.

Almost.

"I'm sorry, who are you?"

"The conscience of a killer. A half-mad idea. A moment in a box. Take your pick. Or don't." The young woman wiggled one dangling foot. "You can call me Bad Wolf."

"I was never good with epithets. How about Bob?"

Bad Wolf shrugged, "It's as good as any. Not got quite as much of a ring, though. Not like Clara Oswin Oswald, Impossible Girl."

"That's my name. Sort of." Clara rubbed the sleep from her eyes and sat up. It wasn't often that she had mad conversations with strange people in her bedroom, but it had been known to happen. The Doctor existed, after all. "Look, why are you here?"

"I'm not really sure." There was almost a frown of discontent on her face. "I shouldn't really exist anymore, at least. I don't think I should."

"Problems of existence. Now that sounds familiar," Clara was trying for a feeble joke. But that didn't stop the half-remembered images from sliding through her mind's eye, from reminding her of all the times she'd lost and died. _I am human..._

"Yes. I suppose it would." Moving swiftly, Bad Wolf got up. She was sitting next to Clara an instant later, leaning in towards her. "Have you never wondered..."

"No," Clara said the word firmly, even as she felt a strange pull inside. Almost as though someone had reached through the holes in her memory and wiggled their fingers. "Now, why are you here?"

"Wrong question," Bad Wolf mused, swinging her legs up and dropping backwards to fold her arms behind her head. "You might almost ask why the universe runs backwards half the time."

"The universe doesn't run backwards."

"Only half the time."

Clara made a face, then shifted away from the girl who wasn't a figment of her imagination. Probably. "I don't think I'm going to dignify that with an answer." Not after living lives that she'd never remembered until after walking into a column of light and sound.

"You don't have to shout about them, you know."

I'm not shouting would have been the rational answer, but Clara felt that pull again and found that she was scrambling out of the bed on the wrong side--the wall now at her back, and nowhere to go but forwards--and staring at the girl with something like anger. "Don't do that."

"Do what?" Eyebrows raised, Bad Wolf would never perfect looking innocent. Even if she wasn't really trying.

" _That_ ," Clara snapped, the pull now a tug making her hands clench into fists. Nails digging into palms (and she wondered which polish she'd see this time if she glanced at her nails. Was it the purple that matched her scarf? The red much-favored by her mother? Or the hot pink that Angie had mocked incessantly until Clara just _had_ to buy it to annoy her), she tried to understand her own anger even as the Bad Wolf blinked and looked disconcerted.

"I'm not trying--I'm--" Bad Wolf paused, as though trying to find the words for what she wanted to say.

Clara forced her hands open and sucked in a deep breath. Someone was rummaging around in her mind, someone who was lying upon her bed and looking so terribly ordinary that if Clara had met her in a shop, she wouldn't have thought anything worse about her (well, perhaps the leggings were a bit dated). "You're here. In the TARDIS. Why?"

"I think--yes. I've come to thank you. But then I got distracted, because there are so many different people swirling around in your head. Like him, but not."

"Like who?"

"That would be telling, wouldn't it." A frown made the girl look older than she was. Much like her eyes. "There are too many questions and never enough answers."

Letting out a sound that was a half-strangled groan of frustration, Clara sat down on the edge of the bed, suddenly feeling exhausted. "Do you ever give straight answers?"

"What would be the fun in that?"

Falling backwards, Clara let the bed take her weight again. "Why is it never easy--don't answer that." She shifted onto her side to look at the other woman. "This is related to the thing he did, yeah?"

It was, after all, the one thing that might make sense out of strange women visiting her in the middle of the night. To be fair, it was also possible that Bad Wolf was an hallucination from some truly un-memorable mushrooms. But Clara was leaning towards this being reality. Of a sort.

"He unmade a fixed point in history. Everything is related to that."

"Will the universe implode?"

The question was almost idle, though Clara did actually want to know. Mostly. She wasn't sure if she wanted to know that the Doctor, her best friend, saving his people rather than burning them, meant the universe's inevitable destruction. 

He'd never be able to live with himself for being so selfish. 

She wasn't sure she would, either. 

Another tug at her memories brought forth two, three, four different Claras, all dying to keep him alive. He never noticed them. 

"Stop that," she whispered. 

"Do you really want to know the truth?"

No, Clara decided. Curiosity, though... she leaned forward, letting her lips brush against Bad Wolf's. There was a strange shiver of anticipation between them, and then Clara's mind went blank. There was no past and no future, only the strange heat pulsing through her veins as a hand cupped her cheek, fingers tickling over her neck. 

The other woman, the figment of her imagination, was tentative at first before growing more confident. As though she'd not done this before. 

Clara remembered, for an instant, being that uncertain more than a hundred times in the past (Nina had been the first). "Like this," she said against the other woman's mouth. 

Tongues, then, lips and teeth and hands grasping. 

Was this just because of the _tug_ she could feel in her brain? The hallucination with wandering hands, now there was a tale to tell Vastra and Jenny the next time she saw them. 

"Flirting with a mountain range," Bad Wolf murmured, then she frowned, her mouth pulling away from Clara's. "No, that hasn't happened yet."

"Shut up," suggested Clara, rolling so she was straddling her. It was so much easier to go with the flow in the moment. This was a dream or a memory or didn't matter, and it had been a while since she'd found someone that really _got_ under her skin the way Bad Wolf was without half-trying.

"I've not done this before... Or have I?"

Leaning down, Clara kissed her, silencing her with a desperate hunger. That tug was in her brain again, and she wanted it to stop. She needed the memories to be gone, or at least to be stored somewhere else for a little while. There were too many other people in her head, too many Claras she wasn't. Going back to teaching would be easier, would be better than this. Anything would be better than this. 

She pulled back up and yanked her night-shirt over her head, throwing it to the side. If kissing worked, what else would work? Bare skin was different, and she could feel the chill in the air causing tension across her body. Her nipples tightened more. She'd not worn knickers to bed, and she could feel cloth pressing up against her, the slither of Bad Wolf's skirt teasing her skin with promises of what could be. 

"I chose this form for him," Bad Wolf mumbled, "But it seems to work for you as well. Isn't that fascinating?"

Then the blonde pushed up and wrapped her hand behind Clara's neck, pulling her back down to her. 

No words again, Clara was grateful they could _both_ shut up. Hands stroked and fingers dug into skin and clothing. At one point, Clara's hand was fisted in Bad Wolf's shirt, her other hand flat on the bed for stability. It had been like this before, and it most likely would again. 

But Clara was focused on the moment, on the desperate need to _feel_ which pushed everything else _out_ and closed down her mind. The holes in her memory tightened into pin-points. 

A hand wriggled between them, feeling, pushing--touching until Clara jerked upright and _ground_ down against the fingers which had managed to find her clit. She didn't have the words to beg for more, but she didn't need them. The body beneath hers pushed up, giving the hand leverage. They slipped and shifted against each other, and Clara reached up to pinch her own nipples. 

Sound that wasn't sound hissed between Bad Wolf's teeth, her eyes flashing as Clara rode her hand. Her fingers pushed into Clara, her thumb twisted and pressed in _just_ the right spot. 

If she'd been in her right mind, Clara might have taunted Bad Wolf about being good at this without having done it before. Perhaps ridiculous words and dirty talk would have escaped her mouth. Perhaps she would have begged. But she didn't have to, didn't need to--all she had to do was _feel_ the pleasure as it caught up to her with the precision of Bad Wolf's fingers and hand.

Her mind blissed out into nothing. She wasn't falling, she wasn't moving. She floated in nowhere with nothing to cling to. 

This must be what a high felt like. That last moment on top of the roller coaster before you dropped back down again. Or falling through a lack of gravity, spinning and turning, twisting away (Clara had once wondered about space-walking, and if she were able to reach her memories that aren't hers, she would find examples over and over again). 

She _pulsed_ around Bad Wolf's fingers, orgasm flowing through her in waves until she collapsed forwards, panting and heaving. 

Bad Wolf's mouth brushed her cheek, nose, lips. Her fingers twitched and Clara twitched with them. 

"I--I--" Clara couldn't articulate whatever she was thinking and feeling. She could only lay there, sprawled across the other woman, and wonder what had gotten into her. Normally, she was so much more sensible. Then again, she had jumped into the Doctor's time stream, all on her own cognizance. 

"Yes," whispered Bad Wolf, slipping her hand and fingers free and reaching up to cradle Clara's face in her hands. 

The tug was gone, now. The memories there, but not so sudden, so urgent. The holes were solid memories again, all sorted neatly into place. Clara closed her eyes and found that there was peace inside her mind. "Did you..."

"My way of saying thank you."

And then the woman who hadn't been there wasn't there again. Clara huffed out a breath as she landed on the bed, no one beneath her. But the languor in her body, the slight ache in her thighs from the stretch of straddling Bad Wolf, and the still-twitchy feeling she got when she brushed a hand over her nipples told her there had been someone. Something. 

"Maybe I should let people thank me more often," she muttered, wriggling underneath the covers. Sleep would come easily, now. Perhaps the Doctor would let her visit Jane Austen one of these days. 

Clara would have an excellent time thanking _her_.

-f-


End file.
